Lived Experiences & Why They Matter…

For much of my life, I misunderstood my own story.

Not through dishonesty, but through an absence of language.

As a transgender woman, I spent many years knowing that something inside me was different, but without the words or understanding to explain it—even to myself. That absence of language created confusion, doubt, denial and a persistent sense of imposter syndrome.

So I learned to mask.

I learned to cover, adapt and carry on with life without allowing those feelings to control me. But they never disappeared completely. They remained like a quiet hum in the background: a constant awareness of risk, judgement and shame.

• The fear that somebody might discover my secret.
• The fear that I might say the wrong thing.
• The need to assess every conversation before deciding how much of myself it was safe to reveal.

It was not always an overt or dramatic fear. It was simply there, sitting on my shoulder and whispering in my ear.

When the world gives you no language

My formative years after leaving school were spent in the Royal Air Force, at a time when it was still unlawful to be gay, queer or LGBTQIA+ within the UK Armed Forces—let alone openly transgender.

I grew up and entered adulthood in a world where repression was not merely encouraged; it was necessary for survival.

There was no safe language through which I could explore who I was. There were few visible examples, supportive conversations or opportunities to ask questions. The world around me communicated that these feelings should remain hidden.

Looking at the world today, despite the challenges that remain, I sometimes wonder whether I would have made different decisions had I encountered today’s language, visibility and acceptance forty years ago.

That reflection has taught me something no policy manual could teach.

Culture is experienced in the small things.

It is felt in the conversations people avoid, the questions they are afraid to ask, the parts of themselves they conceal and the constant calculations they make about whether it is safe to be seen.

Lived experience is more than a story

Lived experience is often described as storytelling, but it is much more than that.

It is accumulated knowledge developed by navigating a particular reality day after day. It is an understanding created not only by what has happened to us, but by how we have learned to survive, adapt and make sense of it.

Data can tell you that people are leaving an organisation.
Lived experience can help explain why.

A policy can promise inclusion.
Lived experience can reveal whether people feel safe enough to believe it.

An organisation may have the right procedures, values and statements in place, yet the people within it may experience something entirely different. Lived experience illuminates the gap between intention and impact—between how a system is supposed to operate and how it feels to the people moving through it.

That does not mean one person’s experience represents everybody. My experience is mine. It is shaped by my circumstances, identity, relationships and the period in which I grew up.

Lived experience should not be treated as an unquestionable verdict.

It should be treated as a valuable lens.

When the story becomes the outcome

The difficulty is that organisations sometimes treat hearing the story as the achievement.

I tell you about my life. I tell you what has made me happy, what has caused me pain and what I have learned along the way. You listen and perhaps leave thinking:

• That was beautiful.
• That was moving.
• I agree with her.
• I disagree with her.

But what changes?

A story only creates meaningful change when somebody does something with it.

Action changes things.

Too often, lived-experience sessions have no meaningful story arc, practical takeaway or call to action. People leave having felt something but without the knowledge, tools or confidence to behave differently.

That can be deeply frustrating for the person sharing their experience. They have offered something personal—sometimes revisiting painful, vulnerable or complicated parts of their life—yet the organisation has converted that disclosure into an interesting hour rather than meaningful progress.

Listening matters, but listening alone is not enough.

Building an empathy bridge

The purpose of sharing lived experience should not be to lecture, instruct or persuade people to accept every part of another person’s worldview.

It should help to create an empathy bridge between one person’s experience and another’s.

I am not asking somebody to become me or to understand every aspect of my life. I am inviting them to recognise my humanity and connect something in my experience with something in their own.

That connection can create an aha moment:

• I understand the impact now.
• I can see why that matters.
• I know what I can do differently.

This matters particularly in today’s increasingly polarised world.

Negative rhetoric, social media, keyboard warriors and a relentless battle for clicks have created an environment in which everybody seems determined to be right. People are encouraged to choose a side, defend their position and defeat the opposition.

But inclusion cannot be built solely through winning arguments.

Sometimes we need to meet around a table not to establish who is right or wrong, but simply to recognise the human being sitting opposite us.

We do not have to agree on everything.

We do not have to understand everything.

But we do need to understand that another person has feelings, fears, hopes and a life that is affected by our words, decisions and actions.

We need to see the human.

Moving from passive to active

When somebody shares their lived experience, the question should not merely be, What did I think of that story?

The question should be, What am I going to do with what I have heard?

Drive

That movement from interest to action begins with drive.

You have to flip the internal switch and decide that you want to know more. Genuine curiosity creates the motivation to move beyond assumptions and familiar opinions.

Knowledge

From that drive comes knowledge.

You listen, research, ask thoughtful questions and expose yourself to experiences beyond your own. You become more grounded in the subject rather than relying on headlines, stereotypes or fragments of information.

But knowledge without application can leave us armed and dangerous.

We may know the terminology and repeat the right phrases, yet still lack the ability to navigate a real conversation or situation.

Strategy

Knowledge therefore needs to become strategy.

We must consider how to contextualise what we have learned. What does it mean for our workplace, our leadership, our relationships and our own behaviour? What systems, processes or habits need to change?

Action

Then comes action.

Action is where confidence becomes competence.

It is where passive allies become active allies.

It means being prepared to step in rather than standing silently by. It means becoming an active listener, an active participant and an active supporter. It means being willing to challenge exclusion, have uncomfortable conversations and use what we have learned to create a tangible difference.

We do not need perfect understanding before we act.

We need the humility to listen, the curiosity to learn and the courage to do something differently.

So, what will you do?

None of this matters if this becomes just another story you have read.

So, what will you do differently?

• Whose experience have you brushed past because it did not fit comfortably with your understanding of the world?
• What conversation have you been avoiding?
• What assumption could you challenge?
• What is one step you could take today—not necessarily to agree, but to act with greater humanity?

Lived experience does not create change on its own.

People do.

And that change starts with you.